Melting the Iceman
by taibhsear
Summary: Series of one-shots (oxymoron, I know, but you'll see what I mean) starting with Grissom dealing with the events of Committed. A GS and team friendship, but not necessarily GSR. Shift Change ignored. Rated for the "F word" and a little more mild cursing


Author notes: Seeing as I prefer reading CSI fanfics to watching the eps (except Committed), there are more than likely afew character inaccuracies. I know there's a bunch of these out there, but one more cant hurt, right? Enjoy, and please RnR!

* * *

The sun glared harshly, smothering the city in its baleful glow. It was already incredibly hot, even this early in the morning. It was always like this in Las Vegas. All through the city, people were leaping back into the daily grind. Bleary-eyed accountants trudged towards work, dreading another day's imprisonment in cubicles. Alarmingly cheerful lawyers cruised the city, seeking out the night's victims with promises of a life of luxury just a lawsuit away. Everywhere, ordinary citizens walked to work in a futile effort to conserve gas. The steady, sweaty stream of people swirled, eddied around a point disturbance: a single man striding determinedly upstream.

Just a quick glance was enough to understand why even the lawyers gave way to him. There was a distinct aura of barely constrained rage about him, seemingly radiating off his very skin. His beard appeared to bristle in indignation, and his shadow-rimmed eyes snapped with anger. Anyone who knew him would be shocked to see such a display of emotion. They would have been equally stunned to observe Gil Grissom, the entomologist, stalk into a seedy gymnasium.

The pimply-faced youth behind the counter fairly cowered at the sight of the man, suddenly convinced that the truancy officer had come to call. He dismissed the notion upon reading the name on the ID badge still clipped to the man's shirt. _Grissom..._ the name struck a chord somewhere. A glint of excitement sparked in his eyes as dim recollections of his predecessor's gossip came to mind. They had been speaking of unusual clients, and the mentor had excitedly related the tale of the Bug Man. He claimed that the Bug Man came but rarely, and when he did, his bouts with the punching bag were a thing of beauty.

Grissom, on his part, didn't notice the eagerness with which the boy checked him in, borrowed him a pair of gloves, and shooed a scrawny runt from a punching bag. A tide of fury was threatening to overtake him, and all his concentration was bent on stemming it. Now, confronted with the bag, he gave himself to the red tide, and it swept him away.

With the first punch, the blank face of the bag turned into the contorted one of Adam's. _For a moment, the eyes bored into his own, and he was struck by the awareness, the reason, in them. A fragment of a quote regarding the wisdom of the insane came to mind and was just as swiftly discarded as Adam's eyes left his and returned to Sara. The spasmodic twitching of the man's torso, his lips far, far too close to Sara's sable hair. Worse still were his hands, holding homemade death to her throat._

_ Her eyes...begging him to do something, to fix "this". And Grissom, who wanted so very badly to be her Superman, could do nothing. When he had first seen her plight, his first words had been a shocked plea to a Creator that he, as a scientist and nightly witness to unspeakable atrocity, didn't really believe existed. All he could do was gaze urgently into her eyes and, for the first time, beg, "Please, open the door..." If the nurse hadn't rounded the corner when she did..._

Adam's face morphed into Mrs. Trent's, and Grissom's wrath redoubled, evidenced by a savage flurry of jabs and punches."**_How could you do that to him?"_** The words spilled unwanted from his lips as, unheeding, he poured all his rage into his blows. Behind her face lay the perpetrators of every case in which a child was molested by a caretaker. Including Nicky's. Oh yes, he knew about Nick's childhood trauma. While the thought of it never failed to infuriate him, he had never told Nicky that he knew. Behind his "aw shucks" demeanor, Nick was terribly fragileIf keeping his past to himself allowed him to feel some measure of control, then he, Grissom, had no right to shatter his misconceptions. But that didn't mean he couldn't rage against the injustice of it.

**_ "Was it worth it? Was satisfying your depraved lust worth shattering them? No matter how hard they may try to restore their pieces, they'll always be cracked, fractured, broken. ALWAYS. Now tell me you scum, was it fucking worth it?"_**

Grissom was screaming now, the words scraping his throat raw. Adam, Nicky, and Sara. They had shattered, and he had no idea how to help Sara put herself together again. _Again..._while Sara had never said, and he would never ask, it was painfully obvious that Sara was a rape victim. A family history of domestic abuse, while covering her reaction to such instances, did nothing to explain her fierce determination when it came to rape cases. And now she was broken anew.

Watching her flee the nurse's station and coil her hands around the bars, he watched her, much as one would eye a trapped, wounded, and desperate animal. _Are you alright? _The inane question made him cringe and strike the bag viciously. Now, the face on the bag became a mirror image of his own, and he attacked it with renewed intensity.

He had been helpless, absolutely helpless. That little shit could have raped her right there in front of him, and he couldn't have done a thing about it. Adam could have sliced her throat, and he had as much power to change things as someone watching a movie. A mental picture of blood, _her_ blood, not Adam's, spurting into the air hit him like a sucker punch.

He reeled for a moment as an epiphany struck. _This was all my fault._ What the hell had he been thinking, taking a beautiful woman into the midst of a ward full of violent sexual predators? He should have yanked her behind him and sent her away the minute that one inmate had waggled his tongue at her. He should have taken Warrick (Nick was out of the question for obvious reasons, and Catherine was hardly a better choice than Sara), or hell, even Greg.

_ "Don't look at him!" Sara's eyes had been transfixed on his, asking for help. When she looked away, he had felt an aching sense of loss. Ever since the lab explosion, he had used any excuse not to look Sara in the eye. At that moment, when he thought he was about to lose everything, he had wanted nothing more than to see her beautiful eyes again. _Preferably shining up at him beneath a veil at their wedding.

_ It can't ever happen_. His fury gave way to despair and he clung, exhausted, to the bag. Sara needed someone who could protect her, and the episode in the asylum was ample proof that he wasn't up to it. Sure, he would have done anything to get to her. Hell, if it hadn't been for that damn knife at her throat, he would just about tried to crawl through the glass. Instead, he had beat against it, helpless, powerless, and hopelessly inadequate. Still clutching the bag, he sank to his knees, sobbing. Salty tears mixed with sweat as they trickled down his cheeks. He didn't even notice when the punching bag broke and spilled sand everywhere. The gritty stuff stuck to his sweat-slicked torso, and still he wept.

Unknown to Grissom, he had an audience. The boy, round-eyed with wonder, stared. His mentor had been right on the money. The savage fury with which the old dude had demolished the bag was awe-inspiring. Especially considering that he didn't look all that fit. His last visit to the gym had been a bit over a year ago, back when that freak the Strip Strangler had the city literally by the throat. From what his mentor had said, that one hadn't been nearly as intense as this. Giving the weeping scientist a little privacy, he headed to the front and put up a "closed" sign. He then went to the desk, rifled around in it, and came up with the number his mentor had given. He dialed it with fumbling fingers.

"Willows" The voice was female, but brusque and rather impatient, he thought, but what the heck, she sounded hot. He brought his finest manners into the equation.

"Hello Ms. Willows, this is Joey from the Right Hook Gym. Mr. Grissom has come by again, and I think he needs you."

"Right, I'll be there in ten." Catherine Willows stared at the phone as she hung up. God, Grissom had gone to the Right Hook. This was bad, really bad. Grissom only went there when he felt too much, when he couldn't handle his daily allotment of frustration. It took something really over the top to send him there. She couldn't help but wonder what the lab rats would do if they knew.

Grissom, as a Supervisor, held various sobriquets among the lab rats. And, until they ran afoul of him, they were wont to call him the Iceman. His dispassionate manner gave the appearance of utter detachment. What would they do if they learned that not even the Iceman was immune from meltdowns?

Catherine shook herself from her musings, grabbed her keys, a vial of Immitrex and Valium from Grissom's office, and headed to her car.


End file.
